| Mr Khan said: I'll grant much of that was mishandled by the democrats (pulling out of Iraq at various points would have been irresponsible, and they should have known that), but in this case you have the Republicans cheering for Condi telling us to bomb Iran and Syria on one hand, then cheering Clint for "get out of Afghanistan tomorrow!" on the other, so about a 1-day turnaround, when neither side is as simple as all that. I was always in support of "staying until the job is done," (and just disagreed at the time with how the Bush administration was going about the job itself) and still feel that way about Afghanistan, although in Afghanistan's case it will merely be a matter of settling for Taliban participation in an elected Islamic government, possibly in exchange for a couple constitutional guarantees so that they can't dis-enroll all girls from school again. That would put them more or less in line with Iran and Pakistan, at least; dangerous countries, but not the wild west of Jihad. |
She definitely subscribes to the Bush style "freedom is the desire of all people, everywhere" world view that seems dangerously naïve to me, but I don't think Rice was saying we should just up and invade Syria and Iran. Rather, she was criticizing the way we've been dithering and noncommittal. Obama sounded positively Bush-like in his justification for the (unconsitutional) intervention in Libya on the basis that we will not tolerate such a massacre, but in the face of a much higher civilian body count in a much, much more strategically important country like Syria, all he sees fit to do is roll out the old threadbare cliche about us being "gravely concerned" and tell Assad not to please not use chemical weapons.
And without trying to ascribe too much of a thought process to a crowd, specifically one at a political convention where I think they just applaud for whatever sounds good at the moment, I don't think it's necessarily hypocritical to support one war effort and not another. Obama was not a hypocrite for supporting the Afghan war but not the Iraq one, and other liberals were not necessarily hypocritical to decry the Iraq War while simultaneously agitating for intervention into Sudan. It is much easier to imagine some good coming out of an intervention that hasn't happened yet than it is to see any good coming from continuing involvement in a messy ongoing conflict. That's unwise, I think, but not hypocritical.
Particularly with regards to Afghanistan, with no infrastructure to speak of and its incredibly backwards culture, it's not surprising that people would feel that there is nothing to be gained from continuing when the best we can hope for is a return of the Taliban. Any such guarantees as you mention would mean nothing, and their inevitable violations would be met with equally nothing... except more "grave concern".
